Can You Submit a Business or Product Directly to ChatGPT or Google AI Mode?

What can you actually submit, and where?

How the two compare:

The pattern is the same on both sides. You can submit structured data about products and places, and you can make your website easy to crawl and index. You cannot submit yourself into the answers.

Can you submit a business directly to Google AI Mode?

No, not to AI Mode itself. Google's documentation on AI features and websites says the best practices for SEO remain relevant, and that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor special optimisations necessary. To be eligible as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. Google adds that no special schema.org structured data is needed.

What you can do is submit the underlying data through Google's normal channels:

• Google Business Profile for a local business: categories, services, hours, photos and reviews. AI Mode's local answers draw on Google Maps data, which is built from these profiles.
• Google Merchant Center for products, so they can appear in shopping results and AI Mode's shopping features.
• Search Console for your website: verify it, submit a sitemap and use URL inspection to request indexing of important pages.

Once those are in place, whether AI Mode cites or recommends you depends on the same things as Search: relevance, quality and how well your pages answer the questions people ask. How AI Mode builds its answers is explained in what Google AI Mode is and how it works.

What about ChatGPT?

For products, there is now a real route. OpenAI's merchant page invites merchants to apply to share product feeds, which power how products appear in ChatGPT's shopping results. Merchants who sell through Shopify or Etsy need no application, because their catalogues are already integrated. OpenAI says it plans a self-serve merchant portal and wider availability over time. The feed does not buy placement; it makes product details more complete and current. Details are in how ChatGPT is turning into a shopping platform.

For businesses and websites, there is no submission. OpenAI's documentation says OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features, and that sites opted out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Its publisher FAQ says that for content to be included in summaries and snippets, you should make sure you are not blocking OAI-SearchBot. On OpenAI's developer forum, the answer to "how do I get my website into ChatGPT?" has been that there is no way to request manual inclusion.

Do ChatGPT plugins count as a submission?

In a narrow sense. Since December 2025, developers have been able to submit apps for review and publication in ChatGPT. On July 9, 2026, OpenAI replaced the App Directory with a Plugin Directory shared by ChatGPT and Codex, where a plugin can package an app's connection to your service along with skills. A plugin lets people use your service inside ChatGPT, such as booking, searching your catalogue or getting a quote. That suits larger businesses with a product people want to use in conversation. It is not a citation route: a plugin is a separate experience, not a source ChatGPT cites. But OpenAI says plugins with strong real-world utility and high user satisfaction may get enhanced distribution, such as proactive suggestions, so a well-used plugin can be suggested to people who have not installed it. OpenAI's merchant page describes apps as optional and best suited to larger merchants who want more control.

Why do "submit to ChatGPT" services exist?

Because the question is common and the answer is disappointing. Some services offer to "submit" or "register" a business with ChatGPT or Google's AI, often alongside directory listings. What they can honestly do is list you on directories and data sources that AI systems may read, and fix your website's crawlability. What they cannot do is guarantee inclusion in answers, because neither OpenAI nor Google offers that. Treat any promise of guaranteed AI placement, outside clearly labelled ads, as a warning sign. Whether anyone can pay or train ChatGPT to recommend a product is covered in whether a vendor can train or pay ChatGPT to recommend a SaaS product.

What should you do instead?

A checklist that covers the real routes:

1. Robots.txt: allow OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, Googlebot for Google, Bingbot for Copilot and Applebot for Siri. Decide separately on training controls: GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler, while Google-Extended also covers grounding in the Gemini app, so blocking it can keep your pages out of Gemini's answers.
2. Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: verify, submit sitemaps, and request indexing of key pages.
3. Listings: Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business for local businesses.
4. Product feeds: Google Merchant Center, Microsoft Merchant Center, and an application to share your feed with ChatGPT if you sell products.
5. Clear pages: state what you offer, for whom, where and at what price, near the top of each page.
6. Third-party presence: reviews, directories and articles that AI answers already cite for your category.

For software companies, a fuller plan is in how to get a B2B software product recommended by AI assistants.

What might this look like in practice?

Consider an illustrative independent coffee roaster, Tamber & Grind, selling beans online and from one café. A consultant offered to "register the business with ChatGPT" for a fee. Instead, the owner checked the site's robots.txt and found OAI-SearchBot blocked by a security plugin. They unblocked it, verified the site in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, completed the café's Business Profile and Apple Business listing, and, because the shop ran on Shopify, confirmed that its catalogue was already available to ChatGPT. Within weeks, product questions in ChatGPT began showing the roaster's beans with current prices.

What do people ask about submitting to AI search?

Is there a form to add my business to ChatGPT?

No. For websites, allow OAI-SearchBot. For products, apply to share a feed, or sell through Shopify or Etsy, which are already integrated.

Does Google AI Mode need special schema?

No. Google says no special schema.org structured data is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

Can I pay to appear in ChatGPT or AI Mode answers?

Only through labelled ads. OpenAI says ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers.

How long does it take to appear after unblocking OAI-SearchBot?

OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to be reflected; being cited then depends on your content.